


In Your Arms, Asleep

by dirigibleplumbing



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Compliant, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Ghost Tony Stark, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Not A Happy Ending, Not really an unhappy one though either?, Pining Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), References to the Child Ballads, ambiguous ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 04:56:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18684583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirigibleplumbing/pseuds/dirigibleplumbing
Summary: Tony visits Steve in a dream.(Inspired by the ballad "Lady Margaret.")





	In Your Arms, Asleep

**Author's Note:**

> Endgame spoilers. 
> 
> This story is not intended as commentary on Steve’s or Tony’s characters, their decisions in canon, the advisability of a romantic relationship between Steve and Peggy or Tony and Pepper (alternate timelines or otherwise), or really much of anything else. The Tony in this story exists only in Steve’s dream, and is not sent from the afterlife, by a divine being, or to deliver a cosmic or karmic message. I wrote this story as an exercise in imagery and to try combining MCU canon with a song I love (details on the song in end notes). If it has a message, it is: Even while finding happiness and a life with Peggy, Steve misses Tony and thinks about him and their missed chances.

 

The night he and Peggy are married, Steve has two dreams. He only remembers one.

In the first dream, he opens his eyes to golden light streaming through the window and Tony Stark standing at the foot of the bed. The sun casts gilt highlights on one side of his face and arms, on the slope of his shoulders, on the edges of his hair, like he’s set aflame. 

The light falls on all the parts of him that were dessicated by the power of the Gauntlet. 

He’s wearing a white linen shirt, unbuttoned at the top, so Steve can see the glow of an arc reactor just where it should be, all luminous cerulean and precise geometry. Tony’s lips are slack and as red as gemstones. 

“How’s the marriage bed, old man?” Tony asks, tilting his head with a cocky grin. 

Steve swallows and clutches the hem of his sheets. Instead of thread counts and wedding gifts, he thinks of funereal shrouds, of the linings of caskets. 

Tony stalks closer. His hair is run through with ivory and silver, but his body is filled out with muscle and fat, the way it should be, the way it was when they first met. It’s the body of a working hero, not a retired father. Supple and uncomplicated. He doesn’t look his age, and realizing that sends a cold shiver up Steve's spine.  

Tony nods at Steve’s hands, still grasping his bedding. “How do you like your sheets, Cap?” 

Steve wants to speak, but there’s too much to say. There’s too much to look at—Tony’s always been too much for Steve to look at all at once, to take in, to match. 

With feline grace, Tony takes a final stride up to Steve’s bedside. He gestures broadly, the way he does when he’s mid-rant, and for a breathless moment, Steve thinks that Tony’s going to touch him. 

Instead, Tony waves a hand toward Peggy, who sleeps peacefully, nestled against Steve’s waist, clutching him. “And,” Tony leans down, his breath hot on Steve’s cheek, “how do you like the beautiful young woman, who’s lying in your arms so sweetly?” 

Steve dares to meet Tony’s gaze and hold it. He emerges from Peggy’s arms, from the bed, and gets to his feet. “Bed’s alright,” he says, matching Tony’s casual tone. “Sheets are okay too. What I like best though” —he takes a step closer, his eyes never leaving Tony’s— “is the beautiful man standing right. Here. In front of me.” 

Their hands are intertwined. Steve’s not sure when that happened. He lifts them, slowly, maintaining eye contact, and places a gentle kiss on the back of Tony’s hand. 

It’s Tony’s right hand. The hand on which he wore the Gauntlet. His skin is pale, bleached lighter still by the dazzlingly bright sunshine, and Steve thinks of an arum lily, with its thick, fleshy petal, curved into the shape of a heart. He can smell the lilies now, too, the somnolent, heady aroma of their sticky pollen. 

Steve presses forward and kisses Tony on one cheek, then the other. Tony watches him with a patient, foxlike satisfaction in his eyes, and Steve kisses right over his grinning lips, ruby-red around pearly teeth. 

Tony kisses back—once, twice, three times. 

They fall into the empty bed together. They lie together, press together, tangle their limbs and flesh and beating hearts together, blood rushing in their ears. Tony is hard and lithe and whispers wicked, incoherent things while Steve pants, desperate. Steve comes, and comes, and comes—once, twice, three times. 

He wakes, coated in a sickly, clammy sweat. 

Peggy, leaning against the headboard to read in the early morning light that spills in, turns to him, concerned. “Are you alright, my dear?” 

Steve’s not sure. “Bad dream.”

She closes her book and focuses her attention on him. Her brown eyes sparkle, and Steve thinks of another pair of eyes, decades away, glittering with molten amber. “What was it?” She smiles now, a small one, encouraging. He’s so used to the matte of her cherry-red lipstick that her mouth now looks incredibly wet and pink. “Come on now, it’s better to get these things out and then move on with one’s day.” 

Steve’s never been good at moving on, but it can’t hurt to tell her the dream he remembers. “Our bedroom was full of blood. Flooded with it. I opened the door and—it just came pouring out, everywhere.” Peggy makes a soft noise and moves to wrap her arms around him. “I think I was breathing it.” Drowning in it. Choking on viscous red, red, red. 

He thinks he had another dream, too, if only because Tony’s absence presses down on him more heavily than it has in weeks. 

“You poor thing,” Peggy says, cupping his face in her hands. “But Steve. Don’t you think it’s time to tell me about what brought you here?” 

Steve looks away, his gaze drawn to the foot of the bed. “I have.”

He knows he’s made a new timeline, being with her. So he thought he might as well make it the best one he can. They’re stopping Hydra and saving Bucky early, this time. This Earth will be ready when Thanos comes. 

“Not that.” Peggy rolls her eyes, just a little. “I’ve seen you when you’ve lost someone before, you know.” 

Steve thinks of Tony in the gardens of his lakehouse, making things grow. Tony growing a life, a family. Tony in the halls of the compound, bustling and creating. But he’s not there, not anymore—he’s in his cold, dark coffin. 

Steve carried Tony's body off the battlefield. He can picture Tony’s lips, how they looked then, so close to Steve's own, cracked and pale like dried-out clay. It was that detail, more than any other, that prevented Steve from pretending, even for a moment, that Tony was just asleep in his arms. 

If he’d kissed Tony then, it would have felt cold and clammy, he thinks, then wonders at how vivid, how visceral the image is, sinking in his gut like a waterlogged ship.

Steve had encountered dead bodies before, of course, more than he’d care to count, but each time it’s unnerving, recognizing the spark of life in its grotesque absence, seeing a body and not a person. 

That day was the only time Steve had gotten to hold Tony in his arms. 

At the foot of their bed is a table with a glass vase of arum lilies. White, for their white wedding the day before. The petals emerge from the glass like fleshy, distorted trumpets, with their yellow, pollen-dotted stamens swollen and erect in the middle. If he looks for it, he can smell the moist, marshy perfume of them. 

“Steve,” Peggy says, impatience beginning to edge into her gentle tone, “who did you lose?” 

A breeze from the window whispers over the heavy heads of the lilies. They nod their thick, fleshy petals like the shoulders of mourners shuddering with sobs. 

Steve turns to Peggy with a smile he doesn’t entirely feel, but if the light in her eyes and pleased quirk of her lips is any indication, she’s reassured by what she sees in his face. “It’s okay.” He takes her hand and squeezes it—it feels smaller, warmer than he expects. “I need to move past it.” That’s what he’s here for, after all. 

That’s what Tony would want, he thinks.

**Author's Note:**

> One of my favorite songs is a traditional British ballad I know as [“Lady Margaret”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Margaret_and_Sweet_William) (Child 74, Roud 253). I think this song’s themes capture what I see as Steve and Tony’s tendency to miss each other, to realize what they’ve given up only after it's gone, for one to yearn for the other after they’re dead or missing or on the run or in a committed with someone else. Now that Steve is married to Peggy and Tony is dead, they fit into the literal story of the song as well; hence this story. 
> 
> That said, this song comes to us from a medieval, European Christian morality and, while I believe the listener is meant to sympathize with and find tragedy in all three characters, it has anti-adultery undertones that don’t have much to do with my story. (I don’t consider anything that happens in this story to be cheating or adultery in any configuration. YMMV.)
> 
> There are many versions of the song and this pulls from several of them. My favorite recorded version is by [Buffy Sainte-Marie, which you can listen to here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgtbdlGUqjE). For a longer version that includes some great lines about the “bower filled with blood,” check out [this version by Cassie Franklin from the Cold Mountain soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgM8BQo_ygM). 
> 
> I was also inspired by the Angela Carter short story “The Bloody Chamber,” which is a retelling of the fairy tale “Bluebeard.” If you’re familiar with it, you’ll recognize how her imagery of lilies influenced this piece. 
> 
> Yeah, I glossed over certain aspects of the Steve/Peggy timeline (like the other, younger Steve who is still frozen) — just like canon did! 
> 
>  
> 
> Find me [on Tumblr](http://dirigibleplumbing.tumblr.com/).


End file.
